Thursday, November 02, 2006

Happiness is a Warm Gun

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. The photo accompanying yesterday's New York Times article, "Iraqis Demand a Pullback,"carries the caption, "supporters carried a poster of the Shiite cleric Moktada-al-Sadr through Baghdad yesterday after checkpoints were removed from Sadr City." The man on the right wears U.S.-issue desert uniform trousers, but more importantly, he brandishes a pistol aloft, apparently to protect the poster-bearers.This is a Glock pistol, the type of which the U.S. has purchased 100,000 and sent to Iraq for the purpose of outfitting the Army and security forces there.The photo supports my previous allegation that the U.S. is arming the bad guys as well as whoever we think are the good guys du jour. The guy waving the U.S. taxpayer-purchased pistol is a Sadr militia member. Is it possible that he does more than simply wave the pistol in the air?Possibly the Brady Bill should be applied before handguns are given to Iraqis courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. It is certainly absurd for Rice to discuss disarming the militias when we are de facto supplying their arms.Two additional thoughts: (1) The large government contract for pistols by Glock--an Austrian company-- is rather ironic given our current economic situation. It would seem that the contract for millions of dollars worth of weapons should go to U.S. manufacturers, rather than to Austria.(2) One must question the sagacity of flooding weapons into a country such as Iraq. It would seem that reducing the number of weapons would be a preferable course of action. Here in America, it's difficult to buy a pistol due to government regulation. In Iraq, it seems they're handed out freely.